[daisy] Lots of problems and I just don't understand the documentation

[Steven Noels]

On 07 Oct 2006, at 02:05, Diane Soini wrote:

> I am having lots of trouble understanding the documentation online,  
> and I'm
> having lots of trouble making my daisy sites work properly.
>
> a) I really only want to have a single site but be able to switch  
> between
> skins. Is that possible?

A site really only is a combination of a homepage document ID, a  
navigation document ID, a default collection, and a skin.

So you can make multiple sites manually (by copying the  
siteconf.xml's) which are identical but have a different skin.

> b) I have several skins and I have tried everything in the  
> documentation to
> make one of the skins "stick" to my site, but randomly the site  
> will switch
> to other skins. One minute my page will have the right skin, the next
> minute the same page will have a different skin. I've tried setting  
> the
> properties in the global skinconfig and siteconfig files, but my  
> skins just
> won't "stick."

That's presumably because you haven't configured the siteswitching  
setting in siteconf.xml:

siteSwitching: defines if the browser should be redirected to another  
site if a document is better suited for display in another site.  
Valid values for the mode attribute are: stay (never switch to  
another site), all (consider all available sites as sites to switch  
to), selected (consider only selected sites, listed in <site> child  
elements inside the <siteSwitching> element). For more information  
see URL space management.

(from http://cocoondev.org/daisydocs-1_5/daisywiki/general/23.html)

> c) I don't understand the navigation document interface. If I make  
> a group
> node it gives me three fields to enter: Label, ID, Visible. What do  
> these
> each do? I can't figure out the ID most of all.

Label is what appears in the navigation, ID is what appears in the  
URL. If ID isn't set, the numerical Daisy ID is shown instead.  
Visible is used mostly for query nodes in the navigation tree.

> d) Can I make a group node link to a document?

No, but you can nest document nodes, which should produce the same  
effect.

> e) Can I make more than one navigation document for a site?

See above.

> f) Can I assign only part of the navigation document to display on a
> document instead of the whole thing?

No, but you could create 'subsites' to that effect. Create an overall  
site with a full navigation tree which is constructed by importing  
navigation trees assigned to subsites.

I'm a bit in a hurry ATM, let me know if this helped or I'll get back  
to you.

</Steven>
-- 
Steven Noels                            http://outerthought.org/
Outerthought                              Open Source Java & XML
stevenn at outerthought.org                stevenn at apache.org